[Dovecot] OT/about SSDs (was: XFS vs EXT4 for mail storage)

[dirk.jahnke-zumbusch at desy.de]

Hi all,

I found a reference about the robustness of SSDs (and rotating rust)
on c0t0d0s0.org (http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/7578-Switching-off-SSDs-and-the-consequences.html)
pointing to this interesting paper:

http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~zhengm/papers/2013_FAST_PowerFaultSSD.pdf

Just in case you ever wondered what might happen to your SSDs if power fails.

Cheers
Dirk

----- Ursprüngliche Mail -----
Von: "Stan Hoeppner" <stan at hardwarefreak.com>
An: dovecot at dovecot.org
Gesendet: Sonntag, 5. Mai 2013 12:22:05
Betreff: Re: [Dovecot] XFS vs EXT4 for mail storage

On 5/4/2013 10:54 AM, Charles Marcus wrote:
> On 2013-05-04 11:20 AM, Marc Perkel <marc at perkel.com> wrote:
>> For what it's worth if you can afford it I'd use SSD drives. My server
>> screams since I went to SSD.
> 
> Hi Marc,
> 
> You have no idea how much I would love to use SSDs for this. But the
> cost was simply not quite justified.
> 
> The price keeps coming down on them though - even now, 10 months after
> buying these servers, the cost would probably be low enough that we may
> have actually done so, but it was going to be about double the cost of
> the 15k drives at the time we priced them.
> 
> Next time, definitely... :)

The verdict is still out on use of "enterprise" SSDs.  They've simply
not been in use long enough en mass to know what the common failure
modes are and what the real lifespan is.  I personally wouldn't yet
trust long term storage to them, though I have no problem using them for
fast temporary storage for things like a busy mail queue.

-- 
Stan